Odycceus – Resolve Human Conflicts with the Game Theory
The digitalization of the number of discussion people have on social media and forums profoundly impacts how everyone connects to their social networks. The Odycceus is coordinated by Eckehard Olbrich, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. This project develops the foundational concepts, methods, and tools to discover, analyze, and resolve potential social crises resulting from conflicts on cultural norms and worldviews.
We need theories that understand the meaning and representation of conflict, not just interests. Odycceus uses information such as language, content, and opinions on existing social platforms to understand and analyze the vast problems caused by opinion dynamics and cultural conflicts. It provides novel modeling approaches and develops mathematical frameworks to cope with sociocultural systems of different dimensions, from individuals to populations. This strength can help us detect social conflicts early and resolve them before they become violent. The project will also develop an open modular platform called Penelope. The platform aggregates information from social media and visualizes the analytical models created by Odycceus.
Modeling of Odycceus
The theoretical part of Odycceus includes game theory, conceptual spaces, and network analysis based on dynamic graphs. The game theory is most relevant to what we have learned in class. These theories and tools allow the research team to better understand polarization patterns of information and social norms. For example, game theory has been widely used in developing a model of the effect of social feedback on polarization. In game theory, players are motivated by choosing their actions to maximize expected utility. Connecting the dots between game theory and polarization, the researchers can predict why people change their behavior to deal with the real-life problem of policing social media. Based on game theory, this model developed by Odycceus provides a better analysis of a democratic and public debate and suggests better ways to engage people in public debate. ‘Then we would have better ways to deal with the conflicts we have and that we have to solve,’ said Olbrich.
However, when we try to apply game theory in real life, we may also encounter many challenges, such as cultural bias. It is difficult to incorporate cultural differences into the game theory analysis because it represents a considerable difference in how the two subjects view the same problem. It is quite possible that, rather than completely resolving the conflicts analyzed by game theory, researchers and decision-makers can only manage them. Nevertheless, the introduction of game theory right here has a significant impact on simplifying complex issues.
Source: https://www.odycceus.eu/project/